houndstooth
First Post
Subsequent to an earlier thread, I thought some of you might like to see the cover of The Elfish Gene, my new book about my formative years playing D&D. It's attached as a bmp.
The book's available in April and will be on Amazon and at bookstores (supermarkets if I'm very lucky).
I was one of the first wave of D&Ders in the UK - I bought my first set in 1976. I still play sometimes today and am currently working on an Empire of the Petal Throne first edition campaign (I said I was old school).
I hope anyone who's ever had an argument about marching order or the exact properties of giant ant acid should find The Elfish Gene funny. It's the story of a true RPG obsessive - I did nothing else for six years, at all. Even today I eat with only one hand. The other one was always for a rule book, fanzine or fantasy novel.
Anyway, providing this isn't considered spam (which I hope it isn't) then I'll try to post a link when the book's available.
Here's the blurb, see what you think.
Coventry, 1976. For a brief, blazing summer 12-year-old Mark Barrowcliffe had a chance to be normal.
He blew it.
While other teenagers were concentrating on being coolly rebellious, Mark - like 20 million other boys in the 70s and 80s - chose to spend his entire adolescene in fart-filled bedrooms pretending to be a wizard or a warrior , an evil priest or a dwarf. Armed only with pen, paper and some funny-shaped dice, this lost generation gave themselves up to the craze of fantasy role-playing games, stopped chatting up girls and started killing dragons.
Extremely funny, not a little sad and really quite strange, The Elfish Gene is an attempt to understand the true inner nerd of the adolescent male. Last pick at football, spat at by bullies and laughed at by girls they were the fantasy wargamers and this is their story.
The book is very affectionate towards RPGs, by the way, but it does show what happens to your head when you have too much of a good thing - as summed up in the opening line:
An elf cloak is designed to render its user invisible. Worn in the Coventry shopping precinct when The City are playing at home, however, it has rather the opposite effect.
It is a warts n all account of my obsessed years but I think RPGs come out of it OK. It's me that appears as a saddo rather than gamers as a whole. I hope the book scotches all that rubbish about RPGs leading people into the occult too. As I show, RPGs - certainly D&D - don't really support the occult idea of magic and, I think, kept me out of that sort of thing rather than driving me in. (I did have a bit of a goat sacrificing phase but it came and went in a bleat).
I think I've posted in the right forum. Sorry if I haven't. I am, as the book will show, an idiot but not a malicious idiot.
I'll try to stick some extracts up nearer the publication date if anyone's interested.
The book's available in April and will be on Amazon and at bookstores (supermarkets if I'm very lucky).
I was one of the first wave of D&Ders in the UK - I bought my first set in 1976. I still play sometimes today and am currently working on an Empire of the Petal Throne first edition campaign (I said I was old school).
I hope anyone who's ever had an argument about marching order or the exact properties of giant ant acid should find The Elfish Gene funny. It's the story of a true RPG obsessive - I did nothing else for six years, at all. Even today I eat with only one hand. The other one was always for a rule book, fanzine or fantasy novel.
Anyway, providing this isn't considered spam (which I hope it isn't) then I'll try to post a link when the book's available.
Here's the blurb, see what you think.
Coventry, 1976. For a brief, blazing summer 12-year-old Mark Barrowcliffe had a chance to be normal.
He blew it.
While other teenagers were concentrating on being coolly rebellious, Mark - like 20 million other boys in the 70s and 80s - chose to spend his entire adolescene in fart-filled bedrooms pretending to be a wizard or a warrior , an evil priest or a dwarf. Armed only with pen, paper and some funny-shaped dice, this lost generation gave themselves up to the craze of fantasy role-playing games, stopped chatting up girls and started killing dragons.
Extremely funny, not a little sad and really quite strange, The Elfish Gene is an attempt to understand the true inner nerd of the adolescent male. Last pick at football, spat at by bullies and laughed at by girls they were the fantasy wargamers and this is their story.
The book is very affectionate towards RPGs, by the way, but it does show what happens to your head when you have too much of a good thing - as summed up in the opening line:
An elf cloak is designed to render its user invisible. Worn in the Coventry shopping precinct when The City are playing at home, however, it has rather the opposite effect.
It is a warts n all account of my obsessed years but I think RPGs come out of it OK. It's me that appears as a saddo rather than gamers as a whole. I hope the book scotches all that rubbish about RPGs leading people into the occult too. As I show, RPGs - certainly D&D - don't really support the occult idea of magic and, I think, kept me out of that sort of thing rather than driving me in. (I did have a bit of a goat sacrificing phase but it came and went in a bleat).
I think I've posted in the right forum. Sorry if I haven't. I am, as the book will show, an idiot but not a malicious idiot.
I'll try to stick some extracts up nearer the publication date if anyone's interested.
